Meghal Shah

Meghal Shah

General Surgery Resident in NY, She/her

Projects

2023
Surgical Ergonomics

Redesigning how we operate to keep surgeons in practice and out of pain.

Side Projects

2023

Worked with a multidisciplinary team of physical therapists and designers to curate and design material to implement intraoperative microbreaks at our institution. We hung posters in the operating room, created an animated video depicting the exercises, led teams through microbreaks, and are currently collecting data on implementation.

2023

A toolkit compiling best practice recommendations on how residents should be fitted for loupes.

2023

I led design thinking workshops applying human centered design to resident wellness initiatives. We collaborated with the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Columbia Human Centered Design and Innovation lab to design this project.

2023
Project Mentor at Bioinnovation Course

I mentor three teams of biomedical engineering graduate students on their longitudinal projects related to surgical ergonomics. Together, we have collaborated on needs assessment, problem definition, and prototyping solutions.

2023
Research Committee at Society for Surgical Ergonomics
2023

Digital health app that collects pain scores from users after operations and offers custom recovery plans based on pain profiles. Currently prototyping with an MVP of the automated data collection process. This work was presented as a poster at SAGES Emerging Technology 2023.

Writing

2023
Treatment Utilization for Musculoskeletal Pain Among Surgeons and Residents, Journal of Surgical Research

Under Review

2023
Loupe Better: A Guide for an Ergonomic Loupe Training Program, The American Journal of Surgery

Under Review

Speaking

2023
Surgical Ergonomics at CHONY PIPS Committee Meeting

Presented quality improvement recommendations to the Performance Improvement and Patient Safety Committee Meeting at the Children's Hospital of New York.

2023
Surgical Ergonomics at Overlook Medical Center Grand Rounds

Spoke about and surgical ergonomics and related recommendations at the Overlook Medical Center's Grand Rounds.

2023
Resident Perspectives on Surgical Ergonomics at Association of Women Surgeons SCALPEL Panel

I served on a panel for the AWS SCALPELS program representing the resident's perspective and experience on surgical ergonomics.

Volunteering

2020 — Now
Class Representative at Residency Wellness Committee
2014 — 2017
Advocacy Chair at Physicians for Human Rights Student Program
Twitter

Education

2014 — 2019
MD at The Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University
Providence, RI
2010 — 2014
BS at Brown University
Providence, RI

Work Experience

2019 — Now
General Surgery Resident at Columbia University
New York City
2017 — 2018
Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellow at The Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard
Boston

Spent a year at the CURE Children's Hospital in Mbale, Uganda studying outcomes in pediatric hydrocephalus and spina bifida.